Allan Massie is a Scottish writer who has published nearly 30 books, including a sequence of novels set in ancient Rome. His non-fiction works range from a study of Byron's travels to a celebration of Scottish rugby. He has been a political columnist for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and writes a literary column for The Spectator.

The Jacobites' forgotten Diamond Jubilee

John Buchan has a story in his autobiography about a shepherd’s wife from the upper reaches of Tweeddale who tramped more than 20 miles to see the king when George V was visiting the Borders. When asked why she had made the effort, she replied, “we maun a’ boo tae the buss that bields us” (We must all bow to the bush that shields us).

Now I don’t suppose for a moment that she meant this literally or believed that in any precise sense the king acted as her protector. She was however stating the case for monarchy with unusual vividness: that it represents continuity and stability. Politicians come and go, some good, some bad, most neither one thing nor the other, but the Crown outlasts them all, and is therefore the repository of national, rather than partisan, feeling.

My grandmother would certainly have agreed with the shepherd’s wife. Left a poor widow, with four young children some years before the First World War, she was the most fervent royalist I have known; she would even stand to attention when the National Anthem was played on the wireless. This was absurd – we used to laugh about it – and yet it wasn’t entirely absurd. There was certainly something ridiculous in the sight of an old lady standing to attention in the sitting room of a terraced house in an Aberdeenshire village, but it was her version of Trooping the Colour, and a lot of people get a lump in their throat when they watch a regiment salute the sovereign. I wish now I had asked her for her memories of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee when she herself was a young woman in her early twenties.

We should make the most of this week’s celebrations because such occasions don’t come round often, even for those who, like my grandmother, live to be ninety-nine. There’s a Bud Flanagan sketch from 1935, the year of George V’s Silver Jubilee in which he cries out, “Jubilee, Jubilee, buy a ticket for the Jubilee, sir!” “But look here,” complains the purchaser, “this is a ticket for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.” “That’s right sir,” Bud says, “I only work Jubilee time.”

Well, many of us are unlikely ever to see another, the heir to the throne being 64 this year. So it’s quite likely that even the future King William’s Silver Jubilee will be 40 or 50 years off. Of course his grandmother may still be with us in ten years' time –- and what sort of Jubilee would that be? What comes after “Diamond”? What do you call a wedding that has endured for 70 years?

This is only the second Diamond Jubilee to be celebrated in British history, for, though George III was king for 60 years (1760-1820), he was both mad and blind for the last years of his life, scarcely a call for celebration. There is actually one other candidate – James VIII & III, better known as the “Old Pretender”, toasted by loyal Jacobites as “the King over the water", from 1701-66. Sadly, not many Jacobites were left to drink that toast when his Diamond Jubilee arrived in 1761, and few would have echoed the old shepherd’s wife’s words and bowed to him as “the buss that bields us”.

Mind you, if my grandmother had been alive then, she would probably have stood to attention and raised a loyal sherry glass to the King over the water. Royalists don’t forget even exiled monarchs. One of Her Majesty’s luncheon guests last week was ex-King Michael of Romania. Five years older than Queen Elizabeth, he ascended the throne in 1927 after his disreputable father, Carol, had renounced it. Carol then had second thoughts and returned to be king in1930. Michael was brought back, after Carol scampered with his mistress in 1940, but expelled by the Communists seven years later. So he has now been a king in exile for 65 years, as long as “The Old Pretender” indeed.